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Nerd Block’s Vinylpalooza 3.0 Review

Nerd Block is a monthly pop culture subscription box service designed to appeal to geeks and gamers, and catering to a variety of interests with the Classic Block, Arcade Block, Horror Block, Sci-Fi Block and more.

I decided to take a gamble on Vinylpalooza 3.0, a limited box (now sold out) that offered 4 Pop Vinyls and 2 Dorbz figures for $19.99 USD plus shipping. That seemed like an incredible deal, considering the franchises that were supposedly up for grabs! Every box was meant to be different with 6 Funko products from a variety of pop culture sources, including the following:

Spoiler alert – this was not the case at all. Most people ended up getting the exact same box, which was very unfortunate for those who ordered MULTIPLE boxes after being reassured on Facebook that each box would have completely distinct pops and little chance of duplicates.

Even worse, only a couple of the popular IPs from their promotional material featured in the boxes – look, nobody EXPECTS that the pops they love and hope for the most will be in the box, but based on the advertising, we do have a reasonable expectation that there is at least a CHANCE that some people will be receiving pops from, say, Suicide Squad or Captain America or Star Wars. We purchase these boxes in the hopes that we will be lucky enough to be one of those people, but that was not even a remote possibility here.

Aside from the box I received (the most common one sent out), there were only two variations: Exhibit A and Exhibit B. These weren’t wildly varying either, mostly different characters from the same franchises.

OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS

I like Gamora, but I’m not a fan of humans in Dorbz form. The squat rounded structure of the figure just doesn’t look right to me, and personally, I prefer non-human Dorbz (the Rocket Raccoon and Groot Dorbz were so much cooler).

Another franchise that wasn’t in the promo. I actually enjoyed this movie, the sequel was much more fun to me than the prequel, but Jake was my least favorite character. This is also a very generic pop, I wouldn’t know who this was without being told.

Okay, this is pretty neat! I don’t watch Game of Thrones anymore, but I do like the merchandise for it (I bought the $55 Daenerys & Drogon pop!) and I’m fond of Oberyn (RIP). His outfit’s quite detailed and it’s cool he comes with a weapon, hehe.

Why. WHY. Sixteen Candles?! Nobody was checking for this! What a slap in the face, ugh.

VERDICT

Quality of Curation: 0/10, very unsatisfactory.

Worth It? Objectively, the value is there – if I bought these locally, it’d cost $105.94 AUD. In USD, the value is $49.37, which is surprising to me – pops are so expensive here that seeing the prices on Amazon was a bit of a shock. But this was about twice the cost of the box, to be fair.

Personal Feelings: The problem is that I’m not keen on most of these figures and the $45.74AUD I spent could’ve gone towards buying two pops I actually like. I know, I know, you could say that about any mystery box – the problem here is that the ONE pop I like is from a listed franchise, whereas the other 3 are not. If they’d actually followed through with what they promised, I probably would’ve loved this box. As it is, I wouldn’t have thrown money down the drain if I’d known that I wasn’t going to be getting pops from the IPs they were using to promote this.

To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. Nerd Block obviously wanted to clear old stock, which is fair enough, however misrepresenting to the public what they might be receiving in these boxes is extraordinarily deceitful and I am so furious at the lies in their advertising campaign.

I reached out to Customer Care to express my irritation and received this response:

Hello Annie,

Thanks for reaching out to Nerd Block.

We completely understand your concerns and have been taking every step to rectify it, especially with our clients who have ordered multiple Blocks.

There is no excuse for this miscommunication between our production team and marketing team.

We have been offering customers who’ve ordered more than 1 block 400,000 Punch Points (a $20.00 value) per block on our sister site, http://www.shirtpunch.com , and would like to offer you the same regardless of only ordering the one block. If you are unfamiliar with the site it has a toy section where there is a variety of POPs and other toys (and clothing).

Please accept this offer as an apology for a situation we strive to make sure never happens again.

If you are OK with the opportunity to select some of your own toys from our site, please create an account and let us know the email you used to sign up so we can get the credits on your account as soon as possible.

We appreciate your email and concerns.

Kind Regards,

Customer Care

That was pretty decent and it helped soothe my ruffled feathers. At least they acknowledged they were at fault and offered some measure of compensation to smooth things over. However, then I heard from a friend of mine who’d also contacted Customer Care and had the exact opposite experience – her case was handled by another employee who ‘apologized for any confusion’, but that it had always been the case that pops would be randomly selected and not necessarily from the named franchises.

Which begs the question – why lead your consumers to believe that they may get something when there is ZERO CHANCE that will happen? Obviously to entice people to purchase something that they wouldn’t have wasted their money on had we been aware of the truth. It’s like saying someone who purchased a Game of Thrones mystery mini should be satisfied with receiving a Barbie mini instead because hey, there’s no obligation to include one of the items on the packaging! It’s really quite appalling.

And the Sci-Fi Block has TWO items from The X-files, as well as others from Star Trek and Star Wars! I love all three franchises, damn it! I’m a bit puzzled that they’re doing both Star Trek and Star Wars in the Classic AND Sci-fi Blocks, though. O.o

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3 thoughts on “Nerd Block’s Vinylpalooza 3.0 Review”

First off, sorry you got in your opinion a disappointing box, but cool (and lucky?) you got a good customer service officer -or maybe they implemented a save face strategy after being overwhelmed with complaints/queries? and the other person hadn’t been told about that yet- response.

Second I never saw this offer from Nerdblock!! I received the other emails about the Ghostbusters & upcoming Sci-fi block. It strange their boxes overlap in themes so often, I have seen it in many of their emails in the past. However I haven’t followed anyone who got the blocks so I don’t know if the actual items are duplicates more often or not…

And now to your box/block. I didn’t really look at the advert until you mentioned you got ones *not* in the indicated selection. Sure, maybe they could get away with 1 random franchise that’s not advertised but otherwise it should mostly from there. I also thought on first glance your box looked good, not great because of the two same franchised Dorbs -personally I would want two different franshise/fandom for the Dorbs like the Marvel/DC one. Even though one of the alternate boxes looks great to me on first glance (I at least know Buffy, GoT, GotG) I don’t think I’d be that happy to get half of the box from the one fandom!

Curation wise I think I’d rate your box a 8/10.
However as that email reply states it does more seem a marketing fail/miscommunication with their departments. Marketing/expected emotional value I’d rate 3/10.

I think you may be right in your guess about the difference in staff responses. You’d think everyone would be clued in, but it’s possible that slipped through the cracks. And like the person in my email said, they were mainly just compensating those who ordered duplicate boxes, but they were sympathetic so I got lucky, whereas the other employee may have just been like ‘tough luck’.

I’ll need to go look at past months and see what the overlap may have been. I think I’ve read that the comics tend to be duplicates if you get a comic in the regular crate and then order the Comic Block as well, but not sure about regular items…

“I don’t think I’d be that happy to get half of the box from the one fandom!:/”

It’s very dependent on what the fandom is! For me, I’d be fine with it if I LIKED the fandom, but otherwise, I’d be annoyed there was less chance for another fandom that might’ve appealed more! I definitely preferred the Buffy & GotG box because those were more my style, as opposed to obscure fandoms. >_<

And my rating was low purely based on the emotional aspect – I wouldn't have minded as much if we were told it was completely random, but to be hoping for amazing pops and then get THIS…meh.